Procrastination is a killer to freelancers. Work sits there waiting and you would rather sit there and pick your nose and wonder how that bug got up there. Time to set the priorities straight so here are ten tips to kill it… well, for the thirty seconds you take to read this, anyway.

10. Remember what happens if you don’t get to work. Your clients leave you, you don’t get paid, you starve and then you die. You don’t want to die do you?

9. Make a to-do list. Look it over carefully. Revise it. Look it over again. Memorize it. Read it out loud in front of the mirror. Maybe start it if you have time.

8. Close your eyes and relax. Now imagine that estimate due yesterday is a nice fat cheeseburger. Mmmm cheeseburgers… and that reply you have to send to Mr. Jones about nothing working is a huge chocolate shake. Vanilla? Ok, vanilla it is. Yeah, don’t lie. You know you’re liking work now.

7. Just so you can get started and not have your friends bother you, send a tweet, “WILL EVERYONE PLEASE SHUT THE HELL UP… I HAVE TO WORK OK?” They’ll get the message.

6. Getting up to make a pot of coffee probably isn’t procrastinating so do that.

5. You know, there are a lot of starving freelancers out there that would like to get just half of what you’re getting for work you are putting off now. Ahem…. WINK WINK.

4. Find a way to get paid for napping, surfing the blogs, tweeting and being on Facebook. Then you won’t have to worry about procrastination any longer, will you?

3. Procrastination is defined as a mechanism for coping with anxiety associated with starting or completing any task or decision. In other words performance anxiety. Hey look, you have performance anxiety! Ha ha ha ha ha!

2. Procrastination is also seen as an illness so drinking plenty of fluids and getting some rest ought to cure it.

1. There’s always the one tried and true method: dangle a carrot in front of the computer screen.

More on the author, Johnny SpenceJohnny is the founder of The Freelance Rant and a freelance web programmer with 8 years in the business. Have a visit at his company
Oscarrr!web or see what he's up to on Twitter.

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Libby

December 15th, 2009 at 3:59 am

How to kill interest in a blog post dead in its tracks: place a grammatical error in the title. (Unless you subscribe to the probably apocryphal sign-painters’ practice of deliberately including mistakes to draw attention, in which case, well done.)

Thanks for pointing out the grammatical error. You have my apologies for any offense this apparently may have caused.

Unfortunately, I really do buy into the school of apocryphal sign painting. So I think I’ll keep the apostrophe there for now in order to draw other sharp-eyed readers like yourself into leaving helpful comments.

God knows I need all the help I can get.

Kind Regards,

Johnny

About The Freelance Rant

This is the long lost writing assignment and second home of Johnny Spence, a freelancer with a bone to pick
at the whole 9 - 5 life spent confined to the cubicle.